


Four (of Many) Times Chloe Frazer Broke Her Phone and One Time She Didn't

by Caryl (Starshone)



Category: Uncharted
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Cell Phones, F/M, Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-03
Updated: 2014-02-03
Packaged: 2018-01-11 01:29:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1166994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starshone/pseuds/Caryl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Mine's broken."<br/>"A<i>gain</i>?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Four (of Many) Times Chloe Frazer Broke Her Phone and One Time She Didn't

**Author's Note:**

> The last section is out of chronological order with the others. Temperatures are in Celsius.

It's 24 degrees at nighttime in the Philippines and humid. Chloe keeps the windows down rather than turn the car on to use the air conditioning, not wanting to risk the attention the sound and lights would draw. Using her phone might be risk enough, but this part of getaway driving is dead boring and she needs something to do while she waits. Graphics on phones are getting strangely good.

At the sound of gunfire, Chloe puts her phone facedown on the dashboard and ducks down, grabbing for her gun. The sound of running footfalls soon follows. Nate opens the passenger side and hurtles into the car, and she's already turning on the ignition and peeling out of her parking spot before he screeches, "Move, move, move!"

Something flies past her, narrowly missing her face. She doesn't realize what it is until they lose the guards and get to the hotel and Chloe reaches for her phone.

"Can you call me?" she asks Nate, hoping it's just fallen inside the car somewhere.

Obediently, he dials, but the dialtone, faint from his phone, is the only thing they hear.

"Shit," Chloe sighs. "Don't tell me _that's_ what went out the window."

"We can try going back for it," Nate offers. "But with how fast you were going, it's probably in pieces."

Chloe pouts outrageously. Nate chuckles and kisses her on the cheek.

"We'll get you a new phone once we get rid of this -" he lifts the urn he lifted tonight, "and get paid. Let's just go to bed."

 

"He had the patrol schedules," Chloe grumbles, staring at her watch. "What the hell's taking him so long?"

"Maybe they changed schedules," Nate suggests.

She gets out her phone and starts typing. "I'm gonna text him. Ugh, where can a woman get some signal around here..."

After peeking around the wall they're hiding behind, Chloe holds out her phone, hoping for better service now that her phone's not behind thick stone. Instead, after about thirty seconds of improving signal, her phone explodes in her hand, and she doesn't notice because her hand has been ripped through by a 9mm bullet, just below her index finger and skimming her first knuckle. With a cry, she withdraws further down the wall, clutching her injured hand to her stomach. Nate pokes his head out just long enough to fire a couple of blind shots in the direction she was shot from, then ducks and starts to tear off the bottom of his shirt.

"That son of a bitch turned on us," he says in wonder, staring guiltily at her hand as he wraps it with the strip from his shirt. "Chloe, you have the shittiest taste in men."

"Considering I dated you," Chloe retorts, the pain making her lash out. Nate looks away awkwardly, and just as quickly as she regrets her words, she's disgusted with _herself_ for still being so easily and obliviously manipulated by his feelings. Working with Nate again while she's still in love with him was a terrible idea, and getting shot was the first sign.

"I'm allowed a crappy rebound," she adds softly. "We couldn't _all_ run off and get engaged."

Nate looks at her for a moment, expression unreadable.

"You know what? Screw him," he says. "Screw this job. I'm gonna get you out of here."

Chloe reaches for her gun with her left hand, her less accurate left hand even when she's not nursing a gunshot wound, but Nate puts a hand on her shoulder to stop her.

"I've got your back."

 

"Syria," Chloe mutters, glaring up at a chunk of stone protruding from the wall as if it's the cause of all her problems. "We're in Syria, while Nate and Victor get to go to _France_."

"Neither of them even speak French," Charlie says with her, grinning, and she knows she's perhaps performed this rant a few too many times.

"We'd better not get caught up in any local issues while we're here," she changes tack. "I've had enough of _that_ crap for one lifetime."

Charlie pats her on the shoulder. It's probably meant to be reassuring, but the smirk he's trying and failing to keep off his face just makes it condescending. She glares at him, and he crouches down, his hands making a base for her feet.

"On three," he says. "One, two -"

"Up on three or after three?" Chloe asks.

" _On_ three. One, two..."

He boosts her up to the conspicuous rock, and she grabs it, legs bracing against the wall. With the occasional tip from Charlie's better view of the whole wall, Chloe gets half a metre higher and about ten metres across before some of the aging stone crumbles beneath her fingers.

"Shit," she mutters.

"Up above you," Charlie calls.

She looks up and reaches for the potential handhold, only for the last of the stone to fall to pieces. Chloe falls backwards, Charlie starts forwards, but he doesn't make it in time and she lands hard on her rump, trying to save her back and legs.

" _Ow._ "

Charlie kneels at her side with one hand just behind her back, getting ready to carry her. "You alright?"

"Ow," Chloe repeats for good measure, and she gingerly checks herself for injuries. "It's just my ass, I think, not my tailbone."

She broke her tailbone once and doesn't care to repeat the experience; this doesn't feel nearly as bad. Maybe she landed on a weird part of the floor, because one side hurts differently to the other.

"Can you stand?"

With Charlie ready to catch her, Chloe stands, and then takes some tentative steps. "This isn't great, but I can walk it off..."

If anything, she's still bothered by whatever's digging into her ass. Chloe reaches into her back pocket and pulls out what was once her phone but is now several pieces of plastic.

"Oh my god," she says, shaking her head, and Charlie bursts out laughing.

 

Apparently Nate's had a waterfront apartment in Key West all these years and he didn't tell her until a week ago. She'd be angrier with him if telling her hadn't been an invitation to come stay there for a while.

Instead, she can't stop smiling. Charlie's finally off his crutches, Nate and Elena are still on from the last time she saw them (they'd signed Charlie's cast together), and Victor... is Victor. Sure, the five of them in what was probably originally meant to be a bachelor pad is a little cozy, but it's fun, it's warm, and Nate knows those daily half hour rainstorms well enough that they're always inside when the rain starts coming down.

They're at the beach now: Chloe taking photos, Elena reading next to her, Charlie flying a kite, Nate splashing around like a five-year-old, and Victor hitting on tourists.

"Come on in," Nate shouts. "The water's great!"

"I'm tanning," Elena calls back, and at Chloe's chuckle, she adds, "We weren't all lucky enough to be born with a built in tan."

'Lucky' is not how Chloe would necessarily put it, but she decides not to point this out. "But you've got sunblock on, yeah?"

"There was this bit I couldn't reach on my back -"

Elena holds out her bottle of SPF 15. Chloe's Australian upbringing means she tends to balk at SPFs below 30, but she reminds herself as she puts down her camera, takes the bottle, and squeezes some lotion into her hand that America actually has ozone.

"Where?"

Once she's done, a large shadow looms over them both, and Chloe looks up to see Charlie.

" _You're_ not tanning," he says.

"Well done, smart eyes."

"So you've got no excuse not to be in the water," he finishes, scooping her up, and Chloe shrieks in delight and dismay and thumps him on the shoulders. Yes, she's as pleased as he is that his leg's up to this sort of carry on again, but a little warning would have been nice before she got whisked off to the ocean.

"You just want to see me in wet clothes later," she protests, because she still has cutoffs and an open blouse on over her bikini.

"I'm going to see you in _no_ clothes later," he points out reasonably, before wading out into the water. She hits him again, while Nate and Elena just laugh and laugh.

The water almost covers his legs when Charlie just _drops_ her. The water is as great as Nate said, but suddenly Chloe has one thought, heavy in her back pocket.

"My phone," she splutters.

 

As she waits in line at customs, Chloe switches her SIM cards, tucking her Australian one carefully back into her passport holder. There are signs all around saying not to use your phones inside the terminal, but she's hardly the only one ignoring it. It's been five months since she was in the UK and she's not entirely sure her number's still valid until her phone slowly connects to the network. She got lucky this time, then.

It starts blasting music, and Chloe hurriedly silences it as people start to glance her way. She always tells people to _e-mail_ her, that she switches numbers when she switches countries, but some people don't learn and she always has a pile of SMS and voice messages when she comes back to any given country. Rolling her eyes, she scrolls through her inbox. Most of them are months out of date: Job offers or invites out for drinks or booty calls that were while she was in Greece, Turkey, Borneo, Nepal, Tibet, or back home in Australia.

She waits until she gets through customs and gets outside to check her voicemail. They run along much the same lines as her texts, and somewhere towards the end Chloe starts to regret her habit of listening to them all _just in case_ one might still be current. (She would have really liked a job right around now.) But she's gotten this far, so she might as well finish them all off before deleting them.

The date for the last message is actually very close to when she and Harry left the UK to look for Nate; she'd forgotten to charge her phone the night before they left and ended up switching SIMs at the airport without checking any older messages.

" _Heeeeeeeey,_ " says Harry's voice from five months ago, and Chloe sits down hard on her suitcase. He sounds drunk. He'd been "a little" hung over (his words) at the airport. " _So I was thinking. I'm really glad you took this job. I'm really glad_ I _took this job. I mean it's all been research and translation bullshit so far but it's actually fun with you._ You're _fun._ "

He pauses. Chloe holds her breath, hoping he'll hang up.

" _You're kind of brilliant, actually,_ " he says instead, the sound of footsteps faint in the background. " _Not just in the sack._ "

She makes a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob.

" _And I wouldn't mind spending some more non-work time with you. So I was thinking, after we've got this lamp or whatever Lazaruh..._ " Harry tries the name a few more times before finally getting it right. " _Lazarevic wants it for and we get paid, we should go on holiday somewhere. You said you don't get work in France often. Sod the work, let's just go. You and me._ "

Something breaks, and he mutters _whoops_ before starting to walk again. Chloe clutches the phone hard, staring down the road without seeing it.

" _Chloe Frazer,_ " he says, his voice low and serious. " _I think I'm starting to fall in love with you._ "

Harry falls silent, and she waits for this to be over. She doesn't know what else there possibly is to say, at this time before everything went wrong and when she wasn't sleeping with Nate, only thinking about it.

" _Fuck,_ " he mutters eventually. " _I'm really drunk._ "

"`End of messages,`" the machine adds.

Chloe's hand is shaking as she puts her phone in her pocket. Blearily, she stands up, starting to head back inside to get the Tube, but a gentle touch to her elbow makes her whirl around.

"Here," says an elderly woman, holding out a tissue. "Did you receive some bad news on the phone, dear?"

"What?" Chloe blurts out.

"You're crying," the woman says gently.

Chloe stares at her, and then takes the tissue and wipes at her eyes. "My fucking eyeliner," she mutters.

"You do look a bit like a panda," the woman admits, her tone still kind, and Chloe laughs despite herself. "It'll be alright, love. Whatever it is, I'm sure you can handle it."

"Thanks," Chloe says, and the woman pats her arm once more and then heads off for a cab. It takes a few more minutes touching up her makeup in the bathroom before Chloe feels ready to leave, and she's not sure that really counts as handling things.

Once she's on the train, she goes through and deletes the old voicemail, all except one.

**Author's Note:**

> Chloe's thoughts on the ozone layer are incorrect science: The hole in the ozone layer only rarely reaches Australia, and then only the southernmost parts (where Chloe does not go). Use a high SPF sunscreen no matter where you are in the world, kids! (My sunburn may be flaking off on everything I love as I write this. Please learn from my mistakes, not from my fic.)


End file.
